Hot off the press from the European Commisssion’s Regional Policy unit is a working paper by Nicholas Charron, Lewis Dijkstra and Victor Lapuente Gine on the quality of regional governance in the EU. This is part of the ‘Regional Focus & Working Papers’ series and it contains some fascinating insights into the quality of regional governance across the EU27. The paper first looks at the national level before examining sub-national level data across 172 NUTS 1 regions. A European Quality of Governance Index (EQI) is then derived. In the sub-national analysis, the work is based on a survey of 34,000 people across 18 member countries. At the national level, the top three are as follows: 1. Denmark, 2. Sweden, 3. Finland. At the bottom of the rankings are 25. Italy, 26. Bulgaria and 27. Romania.
The map on page 8 of the report illustrates some very interesting spatial patterns in terms of quality of governance across the EU but the chart on page 9 also demonstrates some important within-country variation. Which region is at number 1 in the rankings? It is Midtjylland in Denmark. If you have an interest in regional governance, this report makes very interesting reading and will surely stimulate considerable discussion and debate.